More Precious than a Crown

‘Take me with you.’ Trinity smiled. She was joking, sort of, and then she wasn’t. There was the threat of tears in her eyes again as she recalled the first time she’d asked him to take her with him. It was combined with this horrible feeling of impending doom.

Zahid had no idea what had happened that terrible night and rather than him see that, she moved in for a kiss, but Zahid halted her, his hand cupping her chin.

‘I would love to take you with me,’ Zahid said. ‘You would be like a breath of fresh air in the palace...’ And so very dangerous to his heart. ‘You would be the biggest distraction, though.’

Normally, Zahid had no trouble ending things. It was just proving more than a touch difficult now. He actually wanted to take her hand and tell the pilot that there would be another passenger, to take her home to Ishla with him and to hell with consequences.

That was not him, though.

With Trinity he barely recognised himself.

Trinity too was having a lot of trouble remembering that she was supposed to be at ease with this, that it should be easy to simply kiss him goodbye, especially when Zahid started to make promises he surely would not keep.

‘Give me your number and I will call...’

‘Don’t.’ She pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t say you’ll call when you won’t.’

He stared into very blue eyes and wished he was not going home to start the process of selecting a bride, wished for just a few more months of freedom...but wishes had to be denied when duty called.

‘No doubt I’ll see you in a few months at a christening.’ Trinity attempted a brave smile but it wavered when Zahid shook his head.

Trinity was a luxury that even a married Zahid would find hard to deny.

‘I think that this has to be it.’

‘Such a terrible shame,’ Trinity said, trying to keep things light, trying to pretend this wasn’t breaking her heart. ‘You could almost make family functions bearable.’

Zahid was struggling too as he tried to relegate it to a one-night stand, or one-morning stand, instead of lovers who were parting for good.

His goodbye was distant.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The cause of death has not been released and the family have requested privacy at this difficult time.

A small, intimate funeral is being held today, followed by a private burial.

THEN THERE WAS the small spiel at the end of the report urging readers struggling with personal issues to ‘ring this number’.

No doubt it would be engaged.

Trinity folded the newspaper and put it on the table in front of her as the steward came round.

‘Can I get you anything before we start our descent?’

Trinity shook her head and got back to staring out of the window as morning continued to arrive.

She had always feared that this day would come but only in her worst nightmare had she thought that less than a month after the wedding she would be flying to the same church to say goodbye to her brother for the last time.

It had been a terrible month.

She had mourned Zahid, had ached to call him, to make contact somehow, though knowing that it was not what they had agreed.

No-strings sex, yet her emotions were more than frayed when she’d found out that ten days into their honeymoon Yvette had walked out on Donald and after that her brother had gone spectacularly off the rails.

It had from then on been a rapid descent into hell and Trinity actually couldn’t remember when she’d last slept for more than a couple of hours.

Panic had descended when she had first taken the call and heard that Donald had died but it had been quickly replaced by numbness and she was grateful for that as she made her way through customs.

Her mum’s family had naturally descended on the house. Her mother needed her sister but the thought of seeing Clive at this impossible time was more than Trinity could face.

Tonight she would stay at the hotel where the wake was being held before flying back tomorrow.

Yes, another flying visit.

She’d learnt her lesson and so, when her father had transferred money to bring her home for the funeral, she had flown business class this time, but she still hadn’t been able to rest.

Heathrow airport saw its share of tears but it didn’t glimpse Trinity’s today for she held them back, petrified that if one escaped, the floodgates would open.

They nearly did.

As she turned, there was Zahid, the very last person she had been expecting to see, for the funeral was being kept low key. Her mother hadn’t mentioned that Zahid would be there when she had spoken to her yesterday.

‘You will be okay.’

It was a strange greeting. There was no embrace, just the guidance of his hand on her arm as his driver took her baggage and they were led to his car.

‘I wasn’t expecting to see you.’ Trinity didn’t speak till they were in his car. ‘Mum said nothing about you coming.’

‘I only just found out. By the time I did you had already left for the airport...’ Zahid did not elaborate. Now was not the time to tell her that he had finally caved and, unable to get through to Donald, he had rung Dianne to ask for Trinity’s number, only to hear the news.

His plane had touched down twenty minutes before hers.

Trinity looked at Zahid. His lips were pale and his features taut. His thick hair was a touch too long and that tiny detail made her frown, for she had never seen him looking anything other than immaculately groomed.

‘Let’s first get you home.’

‘I’m staying at a hotel,’ Trinity said. ‘You?’

‘No hotel—I fly back this afternoon,’ Zahid answered. ‘When do you go back?’

‘Tomorrow.’ Her voice was dull and she went back to staring out of the window.

It was not his place to be angered by her lack of duty today. It was not his place to point out that surely she should be by her parents’ side, not just for the funeral but in the days that followed.

It did anger him, though, for it just reinforced the fact that she bucked convention, that she refused to do the right thing, especially on a day like today.

They pulled up at the hotel and as the driver removed her luggage Zahid noted the time as they needed to leave soon for the funeral.

‘You check in and change. I will wait in Reception.’

‘Why?’ Trinity said. ‘Or are we pretending today that you’ve never seen me naked before?’

She was, Zahid decided as they headed to her room, the most volatile that he had ever known her and any doubt that he should be here today was erased from his mind.

She needed him today, Zahid told himself, still fighting that he might need to be with her today too.

‘Your mother asked that I deliver the eulogy,’ Zahid said, as Trinity tried to plug in her heated rollers then realised that she’d forgotten her adaptor.

‘Great!’ Trinity hissed, and then turned and gave him a bright smile. ‘Great,’ she said again.

‘In what order?’ Zahid asked. ‘Is the hiss for the state your hair will be in, or that I have been asked to speak?’

‘You choose.’

‘Why are you...?’ He halted. Now was perhaps not the time to ask why she was so angry at him, now not the time to tell her just the hell this month had been for him too.

‘I’m going to have a shower,’ Trinity said.

‘A quick one,’ Zahid warned. ‘We have to—’

‘I’m not going to be late for my own brother’s funeral,’ Trinity almost shouted. ‘I do know how to tell the time.’

He arched his neck to the side as the bathroom door slammed. Zahid walked on eggshells for no one, yet he could almost feel them crunching beneath his feet as he paced the room.

Leave it for now, he told himself.

Trinity was not his and so he had no right to insist on better behaviour.

She was who she was and in truth he would not change her.

Zahid made a quick phone call and when the adaptor she needed was promptly delivered he sat as she came out from the shower wrapped in a towel and watched her eyes fall on the blinking light of her hair appliance.

Zahid did not expect her to thank him, so her silence came as no surprise.

She flipped open her case and like a depressed magician pulled out black, after black, after black.

Zahid turned his head as she dropped her towel and he heard her snap on her bra, then the sound of her pulling on her panties and then the tear of cellophane as she opened new stockings.

‘I’m sorry for the imposition.’ Trinity popped the tense silence with the tip of her anger. ‘I know that you never wanted to see me again.’

‘Of all your lies, and there are many, that is the biggest.’ Zahid looked at her now, appalled at how much weight she had lost this past month, how her skin had paled. He silently berated himself about how much he still wanted her. ‘How long did it take you to twist my words into my never wanting to see you again?’

‘You said—’

‘I said that this had to be it. I said my feelings for you would be inappropriate in the future.’ He watched as she started to crumple and he knew enough about Trinity to know that any crumpling would be spectacular and so couldn’t happen just yet.

To embrace at the airport would have opened the floodgates but his touch might just hold them closed for a little longer now. ‘Come here,’ Zahid said, and when she did, he pulled her to his lap.